Aluria Software Aluria Security Center/Spyware Eliminator Review

Overall Rating

It's about average for antispyware.

No fully functional trial evaluation.
What is received at download is confusing.
Not fully functional at time of purchase.
Despite satisfaction guarantee, support will not take 'no, thank you' for an answer.
When pressed for refund information, no support/sales replies are forthcoming.
On uninstall, leaves a great deal of debris in file system and registry.

Aluria Software Aluria Security Center/Spyware Eliminator: To start with, I originally tried on a 'Try before you buy' hype. This turned out to be no more than a scam to get their scanning software onto your machine and then cajole you into buying their product to have it take care of the myriad of problems it had found.

Well, since Aluria is highly rated on the web, and, after all, is touted as AOL's anti-spyware software of choice, I decided they could be trusted:( Oh, when will I ever learn! Caveat Emptor!

I went for the bait and purchased 'Spyware Eliminator', but wait, what's this 'Aluria Security Center' I'm getting? I see, it's a thinly veiled advert for virtual anti-spam/anti-virus software "Coming Soon". Wow, it's almost like being at the pictures! Oh, well, never mind. Let's get on with it.

Ah, the ubiquitous wizard! What's that, Merlin, can you come and browse around on my system every now and again to see if there's some new kind of spyware lurking? This will help you improve your product! Wait... doesn't that fit the definition of 'spyware'? A piece of software that makes use of your system for its own purposes? Picky, picky, picky...!

I next ran a scan and voila! I had spyware on my system. No doubt the XoftSpy, Ad-Aware SE Professional, Spy Sweeper, and Spyware Doctor I have are charlatans in the antispyware business! What ho?! Why, the locations on disk and in the registry that are pinpointed are empty. A reference in the registry to SoftwareASProtect with no values and an empty directory for Microsoft's html help. To say 'false positive' would be less than honest, but it was certainly not 'true positive'. Well I pointed this out and was told they'd look into it (right!).

Moving right along, I checked out the options. Well, we can protect my system with an 'Active Defense Shield' or 'ADS', that's nice, we'll check mark that box. But when I come back, it unchecked again. I check it again, it's unchecked again... what's going on? SUPPORT: "Oh, well, that doesn't work right, so we've disabled it. Rest assured, it will be functional and updated within 30 days!" Excuse me... Did I miss the 'Beta Site' sign on the way in?

Well, let's take a look in the Task Manager. Between itself and the 'asKernel' service, my Aluria spyware solution is using more than 3 times the resources of the next greatest hog, which is Microsofts 'explorer', you know, the guy that runs the whole show.

This is not looking good. I've exchanged several emails with the same engineer at Aluria, and even been escalated to Aluria Research, but what good is email chatter and escalation if no solutions are proposed?

Now I'm beginning to see the rationale behind no fully functional trial evaluation. It would undoubtedly be a very short time period, and probably not very productive for Aluria!

Tiring of all of this, I request a refund, and even though the only grounds I need is dissatisfaction, I enumerate the problems/concerns.

Silence...

I've subsequently freed up some valuable disk space by uninstalling. However, that wasn't the end of the story. For a software that's supposed to help you keep your system uncluttered and unfettered, it sure leaves a lot of dross!

On the file system, 4 files: an AluriaCacheFile.dat on each of my volumes (C: and D:), an AluriaReg.dll in C:WINDOWSsystem32, and the installed directory. To be sure of getting everything in the registry, I searched for the following:

SecurityCenter
ascupdate
pv.exe
stopservice.exe
asKernel.exe
ascserv.exe
Aluria

I came up with 48 entries (whew!). And I was using Registry First Aid, which allows searching for multiple strings, so the task was not too onerous. Had I used regedit... I don't even want to think about it...

My best advice. If you just don't want to be bothered, get AOL and let Time-Warner manage everything for you, you'll get Spyware Eliminator to boot. If you want an efficient solution, look elsewhere:
Lavasoft
PC Tools
Webroot
And many others equally good, equally efficient, and equally compact with less hype, free total evaluations, and better support.